


Those Whose Lives You Saved

by Pygmy Puff (ppuff)



Series: The Stations of Jean Valjean [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Paris Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 04:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5444060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ppuff/pseuds/Pygmy%20Puff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jean Valjean arrives Paris with Cosette, he discovers that there are people willing to help him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gorbeau House

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third work in the "Stations of Jean Valjean" series, which follows Brick!Valjean's timeline. The series is mostly canon-compliant with some elements of "what if" AU mixed in. For this installment, the first chapter might not make sense if you haven't read The Guest of Montreuil-sur-Mer.

**Gorbeau House**

The day was cold. It was cold despite the sun’s best attempt at relieving the chafed lips and blistered hands of Paris’s poor—unfortunate souls without a home and who must shiver under bridges and in the gutters. To these wretches huddled into themselves, the heatless sunlight was but a cruelty that first promised warmth, but then cackled piercing shrieks of wind that cut to their very bones.

On this early January day, Jean Valjean felt none of the punishing assaults of nature. His body was warm with a sleeping girl draped over him—surrendered to slumber with a smile on her face, in total trust of a stranger! The cold was powerless to cripple him. His heart was a burning furnace that spread fire into his every limb.

The girl in his arms was only slightly better than the wretches he glimpsed as he walked, so starved was she that he could count the ridges of her spine even through the many layers of dress and coat. He could easily lift her above his head with a single arm. But despite the sunken cheeks and brittle hair that spoke of years of abuse, Cosette was beautiful in Jean Valjean’s eyes. Earlier, when she had briefly awakened from a bumpy carriage ride, she’d smiled at him with bleary eyes and uttered a word that had granted him significance in this world: “Papa.”

He, a father! Wonder swelled his heart. To the girl, he was a good man. Jean Valjean held her tighter, stomping resolve into every step: yes, Cosette would henceforth know him only as father. It was better this way. Such a pure soul should never be associated with a dangerous criminal.

He lowered his head and breathed in the sweet scent of the child. No, Cosette shall never know. He would keep his former life a secret from her and from the world. They would have many years together, and he would provide for her the best he could. (The best he knew how. For what did a convict know of raising a girl?) He would protect her until his dying day.

Jean Valjean looked to the sky, overwhelmed with gratitude.  _Thank you, Lord._

Chilled air filled his lungs, cold but clean. The salted air of the sea faded into the deep recesses of his mind.

Cosette slept on.

-

For hours, he wandered among the streets, entrapped in the labyrinth that was Paris. The convict’s instinct had directed Jean Valjean’s steps away from broad boulevards and large buildings—he could not risk being recognized—but he did not know the underbelly of Paris and knew even less of finding lodging that would suit both an escaped convict and a delicate young girl. If a house hidden deep in an alleyway offered safety to the criminal, could it also serve as a home for an innocent girl? If living among the bourgeois would befit a budding young lady, could a fugitive have a place among their midst?

He walked briskly. There may yet be former convicts whom he knew from Toulon lurking in the shadows. They posed no threat to Jean le Cric. But to a well dressed gentleman and his sleeping daughter, these men were as dangerous as the police.

Jean Valjean turned onto a narrow street. Had he been here before, not ten minutes ago? He thought he recognized a particularly distinguished tenement building that stood a full story taller than its neighbors. No other street block he’d passed through had had such a building… he was walking in circles. He remembered dismissing the idea of inquiring for lodging on this street. He had thought it too open. There were too many street lamps; it led to a wider road and would attract too many fiacres.

He wasn’t lost. Being lost would require a destination. He only knew that he should be here, in a big city where he and Cosette could disappear into the crowd, become forgotten.

If there was no Cosette, if there was only Jean Valjean the fugitive to be concerned about, then he would have sought anonymity in the countryside—returned to his roots to become again a pruner, a gardener, a farmhand who migrated from town to town, who would leave before anyone would think to know him beyond a false name. But he had Cosette now, and she should have the best: the best house, the best schooling, the best city. She should grow up knowing the riches of life, for M. Madeleine could afford anything that her heart desired. She should have  _everything_.

But at the moment, they had nothing. No place to lay their heads and no name granting them entry into respectable citizenry. Jean Valjean turned a corner. Another familiar-looking street that he had already rejected (too wide, too bright, not enough trees blocking the windows). A frustrated sound escaped from his mouth. There weren’t many hours of daylight left, yet here he was, wasting the day away by treading the same steps and taking the same turns. He wasn’t even traveling in the direction where he might come upon an inn –

“Monsieur Madeleine.”

The words halted both his steps and heart.

No one should know this name. Madeleine was gone. Uncovered to be a fraud. Dead. How…

“Here, man. Behind you and to your right.”

He turned. It was only then did he realize that what appeared to be a gap between two buildings was an alleyway.

From the shadows of the alleyway, a figure emerged.

“You!”

The man smiled, ferocity and… gladness in equal parts. “Fancy seeing you here, Monsieur.”

The voice took him back to Montreuil-sur-Mer, to that night when he sat outside of the town’s inn, his back against cold stones and his clothes soiled by the grimes of the street.

“Claude,” Jean Valjean whispered, testing out the name he’d only read in a note.  _My name is Claude._

Claude’s eyes grew wide. “You remember? But it’s been years!”

Jean Valjean smiled. “And yet you still remember  _me_.”

A snort. “Of course I remember you. You made quite an impression.”

Claude was dressed in simple clothes, respectable enough to show that he had become a man with some means but not so extravagant as to belie the illicit riches of a life returned to crime. Could his encounter with Claude have contributed to his new way of life? Had it mattered?

“Yours?” Claude asked, and it took him some seconds to understand the gesturing of Claude’s hand as indicating Cosette.

Jean Valjean gazed down at her sleeping form. As he did so, a smile found its way onto his lips. “Her name is Cosette,” he said, his voice softening. Tenderness flooded his heart. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Claude made no reply. For a long moment, both men watched the rising and falling of Cosette’s back, the total trust of a girl curled up against her guardian’s shoulder.

Seeing her sweet face awakened a sense of wonder in Jean Valjean. God had given him Cosette. She was Father Christmas’s gift to a most undeserving man. Surely he wouldn’t entrust Cosette to him without already having a plan to provide for her—for them both?

_For your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him._

She needed…  _they_  needed –

“You need to secure lodging.”

Jean Valjean snapped up his head sharply.

Claude laughed. The sound was harsh, like the laughs he barked in Madeleine’s memory. “Words spread, Monsieur. A mayor found to be a convict? I knew it was you the moment rumors started to spread. Who else? Who else would do what you did? Be so different?

“How you escaped from the bagne, and how you acquired a girl, I don’t care. You’ve come to Paris for one thing only.”

Anonymity. M. Madeleine had said this once.  _Paris_ _would be more forgiving. Greater anonymity._

“I –”

“Spare me your reasons, man. You are pitiful. Wandering about with the girl. You do not know where to go, do you?”

He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again. He shook his head.

The silence that followed was uncomfortable, and Jean Valjean was once again pinned by that appraising gaze, as if Claude had never stopped judging and finding him inferior. But this was not about him. It was about Cosette.

He met and held that gaze. _God will provide._

It was Claude who first looked away, shaking his head, huffing out a sound that was caught between amusement and frustration.

“Very well,” Claude said. He waved a hand toward somewhere behind him and Cosette. “Start walking toward the outer boundary of Paris, to the city wall. You will happen upon a factory. You’ll know it by its smell, like the one you used to have at Montreuil. Before you reach the factory, turn onto Rue de la Barrière des Gobelins. That street is unpaved and has no houses. It leads to deserted streets that branch into other deserted streets. Half-empty buildings that can take in a boarder or two. Try them all.”

Jean Valjean nodded. “Thank you, Monsieur Claude. I shall go to Rue de la Barrière des Gobelins as you instructed.”

Claude’s gaze fell upon Cosette. Something in those eyes seemed to have shifted, softening with a touch of warmth. “For me, I prefer Boulevard de l’Hopital. Well concealed. Look for No. 50-52, the Gorbeau House. Its ground floor is a wagon house. It is decrepit but hidden. You will have the isolation you need there.

“It is not a safe place, Monsieur, but we both know that your prospects are limited. If you think the place serves your needs, then inquire of an apartment with the old woman who lives there. She will not ask for your papers and will make all the necessary arrangements on your behalf. It will not take long.”

Jean Valjean mapped in his head the direction he would need to go. It was a long walk. He should depart at once… but: “Why are you doing this, Monsieur Claude?”

He had heard that, out on the streets, convicts helped each other. But they weren’t from the same bagne. They were barely acquaintances. Claude had no reason to risk his own freedom for an escaped convict. He didn’t need to call out to him from the alleyway.

Claude raised an eyebrow. “Why am I doing this? You really don’t know?”

Jean Valjean shook his head.

He glanced down at the precious weight in his arms. Perhaps it was Cosette? It would be unconscionable to allow an innocent girl to suffer. Claude was a decent man. He must have offered help for Cosette’s sake.

When Claude didn’t answer, Jean Valjean lifted his head. The young man had acquired a distant gaze. He suddenly became unrecognizable, his face like a stranger’s. He was no longer the newly paroled convict in Madeleine’s memory. He looked younger, more vulnerable. Jean Valjean wondered if this was what Claude looked like before spending time in the bagne, when he was a man not yet turned into a beast.

A voice, gone quiet by the weight of thoughts, pierced through his ponderings. The voice was giving an account: “After I left your town, I traveled two more days to get to Paris. Upon arriving here, I met an old woman who offered to pay me to write a letter for her. She could only pay me three  _sous_ , but she said she would take me to an acquaintance of hers who had an apartment to let. She warned me that it wasn’t much, but it was good enough for me.

“As we were walking toward the building, a man I had shared the chains with at Nîmes approached me. I knew by the woman’s terrified look that he remained a dangerous man. I learned that day that he had become a leader to some bandits. They lived well on their stolen riches. He promised me a share of the riches in a planned robbery if I would join him.”

Claude met his eyes. They were still blue, still flashing with resentment against the injustice that men like them would always suffer. But the anger, so present from their first encounter, when Madeleine had taken but one look at the man to know him to be steeped in hatred, was gone.

“I chose to scribe the letter for the old woman.”

“I do not under–”

“Do you think so little of yourself to not know the reason?” There was a hint of anger now, a glimpse of the hate-filled parolee from the past. Jean Valjean stared. What did Claude want, and what did it have to do with the question he asked?

Whatever Claude saw in him—perhaps it was the confusion—melted the anger away, and he sighed. “I did not return to a life of crimes because of what you did. I haven’t died or become maimed from failed robberies because of what you did. And I most certainly would not now be known as a scribe and messenger by many and as a convict by only a few  _because of what you did_. Listen, man, and know this: Those whose lives you saved, they are grateful, and they will never forget what you did for them.

“Now go, the day is ending. If you find what you came here for, then we will never meet again. God speed.”

“Claude!” he cried, but the man had disappeared into the shadows. “Claude!”

“Papa?”

The tiny body shifted in his arms, eyes opening for a brief moment before closing again.

He planted a kiss onto her head.

“Hush, my love. We are almost there. We will be at our new home soon.”

Claude was right. They did not have a lot of time. The longer he remained exposed out in the streets—for if one man knew him, then how many others lurking in the shadows would also recognize him?—the more elusive his sought-after anonymity would be.

Tightening his hold on Cosette, Jean Valjean turned around and began walking toward the direction of Paris’s outer boundary.


	2. Le-Petit Picpus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few months later, Valjean and Cosette moved into the convent.

**Le-Petit Picpus**

_ March _

The first task he performed upon becoming gardener was to bud the trees. It was not conventionally done during the still-cold months of early spring, but after surviving decades of neglect, these trees were nigh indestructible. Jean Valjean supposed he could do no more harm than what nature had already wrought, in raising them from saplings into the wooded equivalents of stone walls. These trees were sturdy and wild, a tangled forest of trunks and branches that were accepted more for the Almighty’s sovereign will of placing them inside the convent’s garden than for any aesthetic or practical purposes. When asked whether the nuns made use of the fruits for their summer cooking, Père Fauchelevent had laughed: “Those sour things? Not even the birds make meals out of them.”

There was another reason for budding the trees so early in the year. Jean Valjean, the sinner that he was, still harbored vanity in his heart. What he wouldn’t do to show Cosette the fruits of his labor—sweeter and more plentiful than what her classmates had come to expect from the orchard—when summertime would arrive! And so he budded and grafted, tending to trees and crops like a doctor healing the wounds of a patient who had previously only been offered laudanum to induce sleep. The garden had been preserved in mediocrity for too long. Jean Valjean resolved to himself that, when summer came, the trees would be so transformed that they would yield the best fruits and the most beautiful flowers. Then he would get to see the glow of excitement on Cosette’s face, and it would be payment enough for all the hours spent toiling under the sun.

The days grew warmer and longer. Jean Valjean was content.

-

_ May _

“She’s adjusting rather well, isn’t she?”

Jean Valjean followed Père Fauchelevent’s gaze from the off-limits part of the garden—his new home—toward a cluster of trees on the other side. His eyes found Cosette immediately. There, under the farthest of several peach trees, sat two girls with their heads huddled closely together, the very posture of conspiracy. Was today’s plotting one of capturing butterflies or climbing a tree for its forbidden fruit? It mattered little that he wasn’t privy to the whispered words, for the sight before him was enough to cause a rush of euphoria to wash over him. His Cosette was no longer timid or seeking to hide, but had a friend!

This same friend tilted her head to whisper something into Cosette’s ear. And suddenly he could hear twin bursts of laughter followed by high-pitched giggles. The girls’ bodies doubled over as their shoulders shook with pure mirth.

Jean Valjean found himself smiling in return.

“Yes, my friend,” he murmured. “Cosette is adjusting wonderfully.”

He deserved none of this, freedom and Cosette and companionship in the form of a friend he now called brother. He didn’t know why God saw it fit to lavish him with these gifts.

Cosette caught sight of him and raised an arm, waving it wildly.

Jean Valjean waved back.

“Thank you,” he said after several minutes of silence. The girls had concluded their recreation hour and returned to their lessons.

“No need to thank me, Monsieur le Maire.” He turned his head just as Père Fauchelevent held up a hand. “I know what you are going to say. You are no longer mayor. Pah! You are mayor to me as long as I remain alive. Monsieur le Maire saved my life. And Monsieur le Maire will always have my gratitude.”

“And _you_ saved my life when you spared me from being buried alive under the grounds of this convent,” Jean Valjean pointed out. “On the saving of lives, we are equal.”

He heard a snorting sound that he had come to know as Père Fauchelevent’s way of rolling his eyes. It was strange, how well they had come to know each other in two short months. It was as if he was no fraud, that Ultime Fauchelevent was really a brother to the old man.

“I would not be here if Monsieur did not arrange for me to be employed as a gardener,” came the expected response. “You did more than free me from under the cart. You save my life still, every day that I am here.”

Fauchelevent took out a small box. He opened the lid and carefully dipped two fingers inside to take up a pinch of snuff. _See this fine quality powder that I can afford only with your money?_ – the very act seemed to say – _You indulge me, still, Monsieur le Maire._ There was bliss on Fauchelevent’s face for several seconds after he sniffed in the snuff. He didn’t offer Jean Valjean any.

Yes, they had come to know each other too well.

“And do not think of your goodness so lightly,” Père Fauchelevent continued. “At Montreuil, I scorned you. I was envious of your success. I attempted to harm you at every opportunity. And yet you…” He made a vague motion with his hand. The meaning was clear. _I sought to ruin you, and yet you saved me_.

“Don’t mention it,” Jean Valjean said quietly. “We are brothers now. There is no debt between us.”

“Gratitude is not a debt,” came the forceful words like thunderclaps in contrast to his own hushed words. Fauchelevent spoke with the stubbornness of someone completely certain of his beliefs, and he knew it was futile to try to change his mind. “All those people you saved, the children from the fire, the workers in your factory, and I, an old man who is unimportant… you saved our lives, Monsieur.”

_Those whose lives you saved, they are grateful._

He wondered why he was being thanked for doing what any man in his position would have done. It was God who gave him strength. He simply used it to free a trapped man.

“Let us be grateful to God,” he said. In a softer voice, he added, “Then we can be grateful for each other.”

He placed a hand on Père Fauchelevent’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. A calloused hand clapped over his and returned the gesture. They would speak no more of this, he knew. There was no need to. For each day that they were here as gardeners and brothers was also another day of saving each other.

On the saving of lives, they were indeed equal.

-

_ June _

When summer came, Jean Valjean took to some light pruning to thin out the “miraculous forest of growth” that Père Fauchelevent exclaimed he had never seen from the garden’s trees before.

He did not expect how easily his hands would once again take to the task of pruning. Touching trunk and branches to learn the natural shape of a tree. Identifying excess growth to thin out. Directing nourishment toward the branches that would bear fruit. Examining the buds, the first signs of fruits that were to come…

If he closed his eyes, he could almost believe that he was young again, and that the laughter of children in the distance was that of his nieces and nephews’. Jean of Faverolles had everything that Madeleine’s money could not buy: youth, innocence, unmarred skin, and freedom. That version of him had not yet known despair, not yet learned to hate. Long ago, he was a man just like any other man.

“Look! The gardener is in the tree!”

“Where? I don’t see him.”

“That tree, over there! Look for the white hair and you’ll see him.”

“Are you sure about… oh, yes, I see him now!”

Sighing, Jean Valjean reached a hand to tug on a branch that he intended to trim. Ultime Fauchelevent was a gardener and an old man with white hair, with years wasted away in sin and hatred until the Bishop saved his soul and Cosette saved his heart. It was divine mercy that he was allowed to perform honest work with his hands. He had no right to wish for a different life, past or future.

Nor would he desire a different life, he supposed, now that he had Cosette.

Cosette, so frail just six months ago when he took her away from the Thénardiers. She was like a tender shoot, capable of bearing abundant harvest but stunted by neglect. Her rightful share of sap was taken by bigger branches that would yield neither flower nor fruit.

He rarely needed to prune young shoots, Jean Valjean realized. It was the older ones, those that had become bent or warped and too set in their forms to be molded, that needed snipping under his shears.

 _He_ was a dead branch gnarled with knots and was rotten at the core when the Bishop first found him. He may have been good once, when he was a youth. But life turned him into a shadow of what he might have been, a dark form visible only by the smoldering hatred in his eyes…

“Papa?”

The sweet voice drew him out of his thoughts. He looked down into bright, curious eyes.

“Cosette, my dear, what are you doing here? You aren’t supposed to approach the gardeners.”

“But you’re my papa!”

“I am your papa  _and_ the gardener. Now, be a good girl and go join your friends.”

“I will, Papa. I only wanted to see why you’ve gone frozen.”

“Frozen?”

“You were trimming the trees—Juliette saw you and pointed you out to all of us—but then you stopped! Is something wrong?”

He suppressed a sigh. Could a word as simple as  _wrong_  fully capture the depth of all his sins?

“Nothing’s wrong, dear. I’ve become engrossed in examining one of the branches, that’s all.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“It – here, let me show you. Sometimes, when a branch is very big but doesn’t have nubs—let me show you want a nub is. Look here, do you see the buds that are going to turn into peaches one day? These are nubs. They are good to see on a tree. Now look over here. See the whole length of this branch? It has no nub. But it is big and it draws food away from the other branches. Papa needs to decide if it’s a good idea to cut it off.”

“Cut it off!”

“Trees don’t feel pain, my dear.”

“But can’t you give the big branch a chance?”

“I suppose I can, but see how smooth it is? I don’t think it has borne fruit for many years.”

“Oh.”

_Nineteen years in the bagne. A man like you can never change._

Who was he to judge, when everyone save the Bishop believed him to be a dead branch? He lowered himself so he could address Cosette at eye level. From this angle, he could see her brows knitted in concentration and her teeth worrying her lips. Clearly, Cosette was anxious for the fate of the tree branch.

As long as there was still one person who cared…

“Ma petite, listen to me. Because the branch we are talking about is so large and sturdy, there may be another way.”

“There is?”

To have her eyes brighten with excitement like this, he would try anything.

He nodded. “There certainly is. I can strip off the bark of the branch… a hand’s length of it, about this size. It won’t hurt the branch, just expose its insides for me to look. If there’s moisture underneath the bark, then it means the branch is still alive. I will then attach a smaller branch with nubs on it onto this bigger one. This is called grafting. They will become part of the same tree together. Then the nourishment that the big branch draws in will feed the new branch. And one day in the future, this new branch will produce its own peaches.”

“That’s amazing! Will you do it, Papa?”

“I will try,” he promised. He stood up, lightly touching Cosette’s back to nudge her toward the sounds of the other girls playing. “But grafting takes a lot of work and I will need to study the branch some more. Now go back to your friends so Papa can focus on making this tree feel better.”

“I will, Papa. See you later!”

 

Long after Cosette had gone, Jean Valjean remained by the tree, his hands against the fruitless, large branch that he had intended to cut off before Cosette showed him the value of another way. He should not feel surprised. For was it not also Cosette who, against all reasons, inexplicably grafted herself into his life, reviving his heart?

_Those whose lives you saved…_

Claude’s words once again rang in his ears.

Cosette had saved him.

And he would love and protect her until his dying day.


End file.
